Collection: Wine Share Picks

This month is a particularly exciting share as it kicks off what we hope to be a new format for the club going forward, one that incorporates a bit of the feedback over the past year we’ve had, and one that inspires a touch more of a communal aspect: there will be a uniform 4-pack of particular favorites of ours for the share, 2 red (or red-ish) and 2 non-red (or non-red-ish) that correspond a bit more tightly to unified themes. We drink, read, and explore regions or varieties or stories more together, essentially.
 
For this month, the theme is Familiar Unfamiliars. Two wines which can be considered standard-bearing or benchmark entry points for their categories; and two wines that have very unfamiliar provenances & are delicious as all get out.
 
Familiar
Gunther Steinmetz, “Riesling Trocken LITER [1L]” 2022
There is a long history of the screw-cap table bottles the world over – Barbera in Piemonte, Grüner in Austria, Edelzwicker in Alsace, & of course, Riesling in Germany. There is the shared thruline: bottles so delicious and unpretentious, potentially so food-friendly, they demand an extra 250mL. At their mass-produced, cash-cropped worst, they are undrinkable, chemical plonk & have created, in their wake, generations of hardened Riesling haters. At their artisanal best, they recall the image at the heart of pastoral lore: the peaceable flowing waters of the Mosel so thirsty for sun their shine is nearly that of glass amidst the verdant slopes of late provincial Rome. And so, to win literally “Best Liter” in a very prominent German Wine Magazine… safe to say Günther Steinmetz’ rendition is squarely the latter dream. Bright and dry with the memory of sugar and all manner of aperitif, it is from organically farmed fruit across 13 sites in the Mosel, some of which produce wines of awe-inspiring beauty (and price!); so it is a steal to have some of that juice in this very bottle. Watch it disappear!
 
Cyril et Jean-Mi, “Rouge” 2023
Throughout the Southern Rhône valley, you spill either side into small, tidy towns with more famous names (Tavel this way, Gigondas that). And then there are mini regions which branch off and whose constituent village names’ renown start to close the gap on their census. Which is to say: this is probably a good bet there are some decent, if not gemworthy, wines to be found at a fraction of the famous costs. Well – in a small hamlet outside the town of Quissac in one such mini-region, the Gard, there is some very good Cabernet Sauvignon organically tended alongside some very good Syrah. This is Southern France in a bottle – it is a bistro wine with provençal herbish aromatics and the darker chew of a hot midday sun. Lifted with the acidity you might expect of something well and earnestly made. Can take a chill, or can be left to its own devices. A burger bottle.
 
Unfamiliars
Mongarda, “Fermo” 2023
We are in the hardest to spell and most drunk but maybe most not publicly espoused appellation certainly in Italy if not the world: Valdobbiadene-Conegliano. To translate: this is the land of a thousand hills of Prosecco. Most of the world’s Prosecco is made in and in the appellations around V-C – in the heart of the Veneto. What would be unfamiliar here? Well – a still wine might be. This is the rarely seen (outside of Italy) still Glera (the grape upon which all Prosecco is based) dashed with bits of local obscurities Bianchetta Trevigiana & Boschera. I have never heard of them either – but! They contribute their own accents to the Glera core – acidity for the former, touch of tropical fruit for the latter. And the mineral, surprisingly weighty Glera carries the day. Venetian dreams from a farm an hour upland of Venice…
 
Domaine Bibich, “Crno” 2021
Legend has it that one of the only on-site visits that Anthony Bourdain did for a winery and the film never made it to air, took place at Domaine Bibich. So it goes: Mr. Bourdain was having so much fun and was so enthralled with the wines that he and the Family Bibich tasted tank after tank and uncorked back-vintage after back-vintage all day in the cellar while eating homemade specialties – that he got too drunk to finish the episode. A happy accident and an endorsement if ever there were to be one for these singular wines of the Dalmatian Coast of Croatia. Crno is a totally unique wine and nicely marries, in a way, the month’s theme. This bottle contains the everpresent Syrah crossed with the grape seemingly born from the karstic rock of this Adriatic coastline, Plavina. It is a beauty and inspires sunny days on a boat amidst one of Croatia’s endless archipelagoes – peppery bite of Syrah and Plavina’s shockingly mineral outfit despite its eager pigmentation. Both deep and light, somehow. A magic trick with no solution except – Živjeli!